


Fugue

by satellitesandstars (kythen)



Category: K-pop, Shinhwa
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-11
Updated: 2015-03-11
Packaged: 2018-03-16 23:43:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,773
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3507011
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kythen/pseuds/satellitesandstars
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>"Come home,"</i> the singer on television sings and Eric wonders why he can't get that song out of his head.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fugue

_"Come home,"_ the singer on television sings as Eric trudges home.

Winter had finally struck and it had struck hard. Two feet of snow in the morning and Eric feels the chill bone-deep even through all the layers he has on. It is night now and this means that the cold is twice as brutal in the absence of the sun. To add on to his misery, it had begun to snow as he stepped out of his workplace, a light, mocking shower of snowflakes falling from the sky. The gods must have been out to get him.

He tucks his chin into the collar of his jacket and pulls his beanie further down over his head, his eyes barely peeking out from under the worn cloth. He can't quite feel his fingers through his gloves and he is beginning to lose contact with the toes in his boots.

 _"Come home,"_ the singer repeats and Eric kicks a wayward bit of snow out of his path.

"I'm trying." he mutters darkly into his collar, and sets off on his way.

\---

 _"Come home,"_ Eric hears again on his way to work, and he turns his head to watch the television as he passes by the whole row of them lined up behind the shop window.

It must be a new song if they have been looping it over and over again. The screen flickers and he sees the singer through a wave of static, someone tall and slim, passionate as he belts out the rest of the song. His voice sticks in his head and Eric finds himself whistling a bit of the tune when he is at work.

"That's the song they've been playing on the radio recently, isn't it?" a co-worker asks and Eric shrugs. "I hear that there's a story behind it."

His co-worker gets called over by their manager at that moment, and Eric never does hear the story behind the song.

\---

"It's for someone very important to me. I don't know where he went and all I want for him is to come back."

It is finally a Sunday morning and Eric revels in a day without work. Sundays are when he finally gets to sleep in and do whatever the hell he wants for the rest of the day. Usually he sleeps in well into the afternoon before going out in search of food, but today he is awake at ten in the morning for some reason, scraping out the last of his cereal in front of his old, beat-up television set.

It is the same singer on television, only this time he isn't singing, but answering questions. It is an interview about his latest song and his reaction to it reaching first on the music charts. The singer stalls, stumbling his way through the interview. He is tall and slim, and Eric finally has a face to add on to his vague first impression of him. The singer isn't half bad to look at, but he looks miserable for some reason. He smiles, but Eric can tell that his heart just isn't in it.

Then comes the question asking him about the story behind the song, and his facade completely crumbles for an instant before he pins the smile back up.

The whole thing just looks painful and Eric switches the channel, crunching through his last mouthful of cereal with the remote in hand. He makes a whole round through the pathetic number of channels he has before returning to the singer and his interview, which appears to have ended. The television screen now shows the singer on stage, a microphone in hand and the backdrop behind him completely dark.

The first note comes on and he watches the singer take a breath and sing.

\---

"The story of this song is about an actual person who went missing," they speculate all over the television, the radio, anywhere that the media can reach. "Can we have confirmation of this?"

"Yes, it is true." someone finally steps up to speak and it is not the singer. This someone is another man, someone of a shorter stature, who exudes charisma as easily as he breathes. "This song is about a friend of ours who went missing sometime back. We don't know where he is now and we don't know why he disappeared, but all we want is for him to return."

"That's why the song goes 'Come home'!" The forums on the internet explode with analyses on this fresh, new information. Everyone has a slightly different take on the song, tearing it apart in search of in hopes of putting together the story of the song.

Eric hears the song twice as much on the television now, except that he doesn't see the original singer singing it anymore.

 _"Come home,"_ a girl croons into the microphone and it just doesn't sound the same to him.

"Come home," he tries, back in the privacy of his apartment, and he can't bring himself to continue with the next line.

\---

The winter snow falls twice as hard now and Eric curses it with as many colourful words he can come up with. His boots are in a permanent state of soaked and nothing in his closet actually helps him feel warm any longer. The longer he stays outdoors, the more certain he feels that he is going to catch his death in the snow.

When he passes the store with the televisions that night, he sees nothing but himself reflected back at him in the blank screens. It is past midnight after all, and any sane store owner would have packed up and left a long time ago. Any sane store owner but his boss, which is why Eric finds himself walking home in the dark cold that comes with being out past midnight.

 _The bastard at least has a car,_ Eric thinks, wiggling his fingers and toes periodically to make sure they are still there.  _Selfish asshole._

The street he lives on is poorly lit and even worse in winter when the snow starts falling so hard it makes him feel blind when he goes home at night. He has muscle memory to thank when he finally makes it to the stairwell leading up to his apartment, and braces a hand against the wall to catch his breath. Something crinkles under his hand and he squints at it, valiantly trying and failing to read what it says.

All he makes out are the words "Have you seen this man" in big, bold letters and "Come home" scrawled at the side in neon ink.

\---

Work is cancelled for the next few days when a snowstorm finally hits his area like a vengeful spirit whose time has finally come. Eric checks the food supplies he has and reasons that it is enough as long as he rations them well. Then he prepares to bundle down for the snowstorm, starting by switching on the television while clad only in his pyjamas with the heater on at full blast.

 _"Come home"_ is the first thing he hears. It is the original singer this time, and he isn't looking into the camera as he sings.

It doesn't take an avid fan to figure out that the singer is struggling through the song, his hands clamped down so tightly on his microphone that his knuckles become all the more prominent against the pallor of his skin. His legs look they are about to buckle under him at any time, straining under the combined weight of his body and emotion. When Eric looks carefully at the singer, he can see that this is a man who is very, very tired.

There is almost something desperate about the way he pushes himself to continue with the song, tearing each word from his throat with so much feeling that it hurts, both him and the audience. But still, the song comes out slow and steady, reverberating through the studio with the same longing that Eric has come to associate with late winter nights spent out in the snow.

He finds himself mouthing the lyrics with the singer, surprising himself when realises that he knows every word of it. As usual, the song ends on a long note, which the singer holds for twice as long this time. Eric tries to match him breath for breath, but he runs out of air first and leaves the singer to end his song on his own. When he finally stops singing, the song's mournful echo lingers in the air and drowns out the sound of the applause. Before they turn the cameras on someone else, he sees the singer's face crumple, his teeth clamped down on his bottom lip so hard that it blooms bright red against the pale of his face.

Then the scene on the screen changes, and the singer is gone. A pop song starts up as a group of boys breaks out into dance on the stage, but Eric can't get the last image of the singer's face out of his head.

\---

The singer's name is Shin Hyesung. He is thirty-six and sings ballads for a living. His latest song had been first on the charts for the past two weeks but is gradually beginning to lose its grip on the top position.

These are the things that Eric gathers through a quick search on the Internet. For someone who had been listening to his song for the past few days, Eric realises that he knows close to nothing about the singer. But being snowed in and bored gives him plenty of time to learn about Shin Hyesung.

Eric burns through his electricity bill watching clips of Hyesung's past songs and illegally downloading his albums to listen to the songs that aren't performed live. He goes backwards in time, following Hyesung's songs in reverse chronology. All of his songs have a touch of sadness to them that Eric can't quite shake off until he hits a song from three years ago.

The start of the song hits him like an explosion, a bright, cheery explosion, and Eric blinks once, twice, before restarting the song again. The vocals that come in a few seconds into the song are unmistakably Hyesung's but he sounds different. Lighter - happier, even - and Eric leans back in his chair, trying to recover from the shock.

He never knew Hyesung could sound like that. All the songs Eric has heard of his so far have been of loss and grief, the hurt so palpable in every note that he sings. The Hyesung of three years ago is free from all of this, carefree in song and bursting with life.

It is a love song, Eric realises belatedly, when he finally comes back to his senses in time to catch the last bit of the song. When it ends, he puts it back on loop and listens carefully to each and every word that Hyesung sings. If his latest song has a story behind it, one about losing someone that you loved, this song is its complete opposite. The rest of his songs from his earlier years are nice and alternate between sappy and sad, but it is this song in particular and the ones that follow it that strike him the most.

They sound genuine, as if they contain bits from Hyesung's own experiences, little hints about what had gone on in his life. Falling in love in one year and then losing everything after that. It is almost like a cliché, except that it is actually happened in Hyesung's case, if he was reading into it right.

Although, there had to be something more to this than just that. Hyesung wouldn't sound or look like that if it was just a simple story of falling in and out of love, which was something that happened all the time. It is something that Eric feels strangely compelled to find out more about.

\---

When the snowstorm finally breaks and the sun decides to show up, Eric leaves his apartment. He hasn't breathed in fresh air in a while, and his apartment had started to stink of instant noodles, unwashed clothes, and other indiscernible odours while he was cooped up in there during the snowstorm. He can't quite remember what day it is, but he hasn't heard from his boss yet so he figures that it should be fine if he doesn't show up at work yet. Holidays had been hard to come by lately, and he was going to make full use of this sort-of holiday the snowstorm had dropped at his doorstep.

His first stop is to the supermarket across his apartment building, where he stocks up on more instant noodles and canned food. He thinks about getting more than the meagre pile in his shopping basket, something nice maybe, but then decides against it when he remembers how flat his wallet had been when he slipped it in his pocket.

His next stop requires a bit more consideration, because he doesn't do much outside of eating, sleeping, and the occasion television-watching. It is a nice day for winter but Eric can't think of a single thing that he wants to do while the weather is still kind enough to let him remain outdoors.

"Why don't I have any hobbies?" Eric wonders out loud as he stands on the sidewalk outside the supermarket.

 _Because you're a fucking loser,_ his brain responds snidely, and he scowls. He is going to prove himself wrong today.

Eric hoists his grocery bags up and walks down the pavement, gazing long and hard into each shop he passes by, trying to convince himself that he is interested enough to walk in. It is December and to businesses that means thirty-one straight days of Christmas. Christmas decorations and carols fill the shops that he passes by, and he sees a Christmas tree in every other shop. They repel him and his legs won't allow him to walk into a shop decked out merrily in green and red and fake snow when there is already plenty of it out here in the cold.

He is about to turn back and return to the comfort of his warm and slightly odorous apartment when a familiar voice catches his attention.

 _"Come home,"_ he hears Hyesung from within a shop, and Eric finds himself inside the shop before he even fully realises what happened.

It is a CD shop from the looks of it, and Hyesung's voice comes from the speakers at each corner, filling up the room with his song. He makes his way over to the racks before a shop attendant notices him, and navigates his way to a rack labelled "Ballads".

Eric doesn't know what he's doing. He doesn't have the money for this but yet his fingers sort through the albums, his eyes searching for one particular name. Eventually, he comes up with a small stack of Hyesung's albums, organised in no particular order, and settles down on the floor with his groceries beside him.

The first album in the stack is from 1998 and he remembers that as the year that Hyesung had made his debut. The rest of the albums are from 2000 onwards and there is at least one per year. He sees the albums from 2010, 2011, and then it skips over 2012 to 2013, and then finally to the latest one in 2014.

"Can I help you, sir?" someone asks him as he rummages through the racks in search of an album from 2012. The shop attendant maintains a polite smile as she waits for a reply, but her gaze flits from the plastic bags filled with food to the scattered albums on the floor to his weathered clothes before finally meeting his eyes.

Eric stands up, staunchly pretending that the mess on the floor isn't there, and clears his throat. "Um, yes. Do you have an album by Shin Hyesung that was released in 2012?"

"I'm sorry, but I don't think he released an album that year."

"But he has one for every year."

"Not that year. Didn't you see? It was all over the news." The attendant raises an eyebrow at him.

"What was?"

"Shin Hyesung disappeared that year."

Eric feels his heartbeat stutter, and then repeats, "Disappeared?"

"Well, it was more of a hiatus, but it was all so sudden. He stopped appearing on shows and all his song releases were canceled. The fans, the news, everyone, thought that he had just vanished."

"Did he ever say what happened?"

The attendant shakes her head. "He never gave a proper explanation for his disappearance. But in my opinion, he wasn't quite the same when he came back."

Another customer comes in and the attendant drifts off, glancing at the mess on the floor with distress before she leaves. When she is safely out of sight, Eric drops back on the floor, absently looking through the stack of albums before him.

Love songs in 2011 and sorrowful ballads in 2013. He wondered what had happened in the year between that.

\---

Eric buys Hyesung's album, the latest one, and resigns himself to living off a packet of instant noodles a day until he gets his next paycheck. It is a stupid, impulsive thing to do. He doesn't even have a CD player, just his computer with its muffled speakers and tendency to lag.

But it is something he doesn't regret buying, not when his computer finally cooperates and the first strains of a song he is much too familiar with starts up.

It is strange, how he hasn't gotten sick of a song he has heard more times than should be normal. He doesn't think he's very musically inclined, and he barely pays attention to the new songs that circulate on the radio or music shows. He likes rap, but it is not something he would spend money on.

So what makes Hyesung's songs so different?

Eric doesn't know, but he leaves the album on loop when he goes to sleep that night. The last thing he hears before he slips out of consciousness are the words  _"Come home"_ and he feels the need to reply to that, to tell Hyesung that he is coming home. But then sleep pulls him under and when he wakes up the next morning, he doesn't remember anything.

\---

His rent is due the next day. No matter how many times he checks the balance in his bank book, the figure doesn't change and deep down in his heart, Eric knows that he is screwed.

Winter has not been kind to him. He had needed a new coat when his old one proved ineffectual against the freezing winds. The electricity bill had gone up while the temperature had dropped rapidly. His boss refused to pay him for the days he missed when the snowstorm wreaked havoc in town.

But most of all, he blames Shin Hyesung.

"If I get kicked out of my house, I'm coming after you." Eric tells the album propped up beside his computer.

The picture of Hyesung on it doesn't answer. It doesn't even bother looking at him, staring out into the distance soulfully. Eric puts it facedown out of spite before thinking of what he is going to tell his landlady tomorrow.

\---

The next day, there is a knock on his door and he opens it with the air of a man who fully expects death awaiting on the other side.

"You don't have enough." his landlady states flatly once she sees his face, and crosses her arms.

"I don't." Eric confirms. "But I have excuses. Can I give them a try?"

She snorts. "Save it. When can I get my money?"

"By the end of this month." Eric responds immediately.

"I'm taking your word for it." she warns. "No rent, no home. I didn't take you in two years ago out of the goodness of my heart."

"Yes, ma'am. Thank you, ma'am." Eric nods seriously. She doesn't quite crack a smile at that, but Eric still considers it a victory when she walks away without pestering him further about the rent.

Eric shuts the door as quickly and quietly as possible when he sees her back disappearing down the stairs. He heaves a sigh of relief, leaning against the inside of the door and sliding down its length to rest on the floor.

He honestly had no idea what he was going to do if she had insisted on getting her rent today or any time before his paycheck came in. Sleep out in the streets and develop hypothermia maybe. He doesn't know anyone around well enough to crash at their place.

Two years. His landlady had said that Eric had been here for two years and yet he doesn't have any friends. It is kind of sad actually.

"Two years?" Eric says aloud, and for some reason that doesn't seem right to him.

He lived here for only two years? That can't be right. He can't remember living anywhere else but here.

What about his family? He had to have stayed with them before he moved into a place of his own. Where are they anyway?

The questions starts piling up in his head and Eric finds that he doesn't know the answer to any of them.

\---

He stops listening to Hyesung's songs.

Eric returns to work that day and walks home in silence at night. The television sets in the window are quiet and he is the only person left out on the streets, making his way home by foot. It is cold, as usual, but this time he doesn't pay attention to it.

There had been talk at his office today, a rumour going around that the company was going through a crisis and retrenchment might be inevitable. With only less than a year of work under his belt, a short period of time compared to his co-workers, his neck would be one of the first on the line.

He doesn't have anywhere else to go. He is thirty-six, behind on his rent, and has no proper documentation of his qualifications to back him up. The options that he has are sadly limited. Eric knows that he must have gone to school somewhere. It feels like he did. There are other things that he must have done in his life before reaching this point in his life. Great things, even.

But now all he has is a small apartment in the darkest part of town, in which he is only living in on borrowed time. His most valuable items are his dwindling supply of instant noodles, and an album by an artist whose life looks like it is falling apart on him.

Strangely enough, he is not too bothered about the gaping hole in his memory where his past should be. Not when he has more pressing issues at hand.

While he hasn't received an official notice, he has been receiving pitying looks from the rest of his co-workers, who glance at him from time to time as if he is in the last stage of a particularly deadly disease. It doesn't take a genius to realise that his days are numbered at the office.

Still, Eric wakes up at eight o'clock every morning to go to work, and pulls himself through the midnight snow to go home. It's not over till it's over, and he'd be damned if he gives up on his job before his boss does.

The only change in his routine is the constant silence.

Hyesung's song is gone from the streets of his neighbourhood, replaced by countless other songs churned out by others in the industry. He has not touched Hyesung's album since his landlady visited, and it remains facedown on his desk, a fine layer of dust beginning to form on its surface.

 _"Come home,"_ Hyesung had sung, a lone accompaniment in the lonely winter nights Eric found himself walking in one too many times.

Now there is only silence and Eric begins to wonder, really, where is home?

\---

Eric dreams.

In his dreams, there is snow and Eric sort of laughs. As if he hasn't seen and walked through enough of it while awake. Now it is even haunting his dreams, that bastard.

Then the laughter dies down in his throat when he realises that there is someone else here in his dream with him.

"Eric." Hyesung calls out. He smiles, and Eric finds that he cannot look away.

It is a proper smile, a genuine one, not like the forced ones he wears for television broadcasts. It lights him up from within and lends warmth to his eyes, and Eric thinks that he should smile like that more often.

Since this is a dream, Hyesung hears him anyway and the corner of his mouth quirks up in amusement.

"It's your fault that I don't smile much these days, you know." Hyesung tells him.

"What did I do?" Eric says defensively, out loud this time since it doesn't make much of a difference.

Hyesung doesn't answer. He stands right before Eric, so close that he could touch him if he just raised his arm a little. The smile fades from his lips and Eric sees the shadows return to his face, stealing his light and leaving sorrow in its place. At the end of it all, this is the Hyesung he sees on television broadcasts on his way home. The Hyesung who sings about people who are lost and cannot find their way back home. With the light inside him gone, he looks like he could fade away at any time.

 _Shin Hyesung disappeared that year,_ the voice of the shop attendant rings through his head, and Eric wraps his fingers around Hyesung's arm, suddenly seized by fear.

"Don't disappear again." Eric says.

 _Stay with me,_ he wants to add, but the inside of his mouth feels dry and his words do not come out as easily as he wants them to. There is so much more he wants to say to Hyesung.

Unlike the previous time, Hyesung doesn't hear the rest of his words. He does try for a smile again, but it is small and sad. A hand caresses Eric's cheek, its touch fleeting and tender, and he leans into it.

"Come home, Eric." Hyesung says in a voice that is barely more than a whisper, and then he and the dream falls away.

Eric wakes up in the dark, calmly and quietly, and there is an ache in his chest that reaches all the way in to where his heart is.

\---

It is the end of the month and Eric doesn't pay the rent he promised. He leaves.

It is a stupidly impulsive decision, just like the one he made yesterday when he left his letter of resignation on his boss's table. But it is too late to back out of it when he steps out of his apartment with nothing but a backpack on his back, filled with everything he owns.

Eric is just following his dreams, even if he is taking them more literally than others do.

\---

Seoul is big and noisy, and Eric has to steel himself when he steps out of the train, reminding himself that he is here for a purpose.

The problem is that while he does have a purpose, he is sorely lacking a plan to achieve this purpose. He doesn't know anything about Seoul, other than that it had taken the last of his savings to come here, and that this is where Shin Hyesung is. Where Shin Hyesung is exactly is a question he doesn't quite have the answer to yet, and it isn't something he can ask the general public of Seoul.

He really should have thought this through, but the thing is he hadn't really been thinking in the first place when he had thrown together what scant belongings he owned and booked a ticket out of town. All he had been driven by was the deep sense of anxiety in his chest, urging him on every step of the way.

At the moment, he doesn't even have enough for both lodging and transportation, and he chooses the latter over the former when he flags down a taxi. He had already gotten this far through sheer impulsiveness and he is going to stick with it even if it only ends in grief for him.

"Where to?" the taxi driver asks as soon as he gets in.

"Shin Hyesung's house." Eric replies promptly.

"Excuse me?" Well, it was worth a shot.

Then understanding suddenly dawns on the taxi driver's face and he adds, "Do you mean that concert venue? The one that Shin Hyesung's having his year-end concert at?"

Eric blinks. He quickly recovers in time to reply in the affirmative and then the driver is off.

"How did you know where Shin Hyesung's year-end concert is?" he asks curiously.

The driver laughs. "My daughter's a huge fan of his and she insisted that I drop her off at the concert before my shift. Say, I dropped her off a few hours earlier. Aren't you late for the concert?"

"Nah, she's just early." Eric lies. "You know how girls are when it comes to concerts."

"Yeah, I get it." The taxi driver agrees. "Although, it's not every day I see a guy going for a concert like this, let alone coming from out of town to attend. Huge fan?"

"Sort of." Eric answers non-committedly.

They drop off into silence after that, and Eric leans his head carefully against the window to watch the lights go by outside his window. The sky had started to darken somewhere along the way, but unlike his small town, the streets of Seoul didn't plunge entirely into darkness when night fell. There are streetlights lining the road and brightly coloured lights in storefronts, which reflect off the white of the snow.

There are more people here too, walking by themselves or in pairs. It is the end of the year and Eric sees couples out in the snow with their hands entwined and their heads put close together. He glances up at the sky and wonders if they are going to watch the fireworks when the year officially ends. There were always fireworks around this area during the New Year.

\---

Eric never makes it to Hyesung's concert, when he finds that he is just short of enough to make the journey there. The taxi driver drops him off by the side of the road as soon as he makes known the sad amount left in his wallet.

It doesn't matter. What would he have done if he had reached anyway?

Left to himself, Eric wanders over to a nearby bench and falls onto it heavily, discarding his backpack and all.

What is he doing? Hyesung doesn't know him, and he isn't sure if he even knows Hyesung in the first place. All he has to go upon is a dream and a song that tries to drag something out of him every time he hears it. Money is definitely part of that 'something', considering the amount he forked out for a single album, but there is something else remaining, buried deep within him, that had brought him here to Seoul.

He wants to know what it is, and if it can tell him about himself and what home is. "Come home," Hyesung had sang, and Eric just wants to know if the home Hyesung sings about is the same as his.

The wind picks up, rustling stray leaves left out on the street, of trees which have survived the cold. It reminds him of winter and the long nights he spent trudging home with the snow melting down his back. When Eric looks up, he almost expects to see snowflakes falling from the sky, back to haunt him again.

Instead, he hears a sound that makes him flinch, like a gunshot, and the world above him explodes into colour. The fireworks have started.

There is no one in his immediate vicinity, but he can hear them all around him, trying to make themselves heard above the deafening crack of the fireworks. They are beautiful, as they always are, and Eric finds himself transfixed by the sight. There is red and blue and green and orange, bursting into spiralling shapes before shimmering out of existence. A shower of gold sparks fall like rain from the sky, and Eric knows that this had been someone's favourite.

_And at the very instant it appeared, Eric would look at him instead of the sky and he would see the sparks of gold reflected in his eyes, lighting him up from within. That particular year had been marked by an unusually heavy snowfall. Framed by the snowflakes drifting by on the wind, Eric found that he was beautiful in that moment, even if Eric had never told him that before. He would tell him that the next time they met, he promised himself. He definitely would._

The fireworks have died down, and all that is left is the sound of murmurs and laughter in the distance.

 _"Come home."_ The wind whispers to him in someone's voice, and that is when it all falls apart and fits together again, all at the same time.

His feet carry him down the street before his mind catches up and, two years late, Eric finds that he finally knows where to go.

\---

There is a door before him, one that Eric has been through so many times he wonders how he could have forgotten it in the first place. Nothing has changed since he was here two years ago, since he left without a word and without any idea of what he was doing.

People were strange and they did strange things sometimes, like suddenly gaining the compulsion to leave and then to return. Sometimes they left parts of themselves behind, to be kept by people they loved and who loved them so much that they never moved on.

Eric was one of the lucky ones. He had Hyesung, who kept a part of him safe while he was out wandering, and called out to him when he had been away for too long. But it had been much too long, and Hyesung had stubbornly clung onto that part of him without realising that he was gradually disappearing as well.

He hopes Hyesung forgives him for making him wait for so long. He hopes - selfishly, because he can't give him up yet - that Hyesung will take him back even after all the pain he caused him.

And the worst part of it all is that Hyesung probably would, because the numerical code he keys into the door still results in a soft click that tells him that Hyesung still isn't willing to let him go. He knows without doing so that if he reaches for the door handle, the door would still open for him.

What he does instead is to ring the doorbell, and wait.

It is sometime around four in the morning, if his phone is to be trusted, and Hyesung is probably exhausted from his concert. He isn't even sure if Hyesung is home yet. But muffled footsteps sound from inside the apartment, and his heartbeat picks up in response to it. He has so many things to say to Hyesung, but first he'll start with an apology.

The door bursts open, and it is like his dream all over again. Hyesung is here before him, only this time he is sleep-ruffled, his eyes bleary as he struggles to keep them open, and his usually impeccable hair sticks up at odd angles. He wears a thick sweater to keep the warmth in and the cold out, and soft pants that have stretched in the wash over time. He looks so different from how he is on stage, confused and mouth falling upon as he registers who this late-night visitor is, and Eric feels his heart stop cold in his throat.

"Eric?" Hyesung says, his voice rough with a mixture of sleep and exhaustion. "Is that you, Eric?"

Eric opens his mouth to answer, but nothing comes out. There are so many thoughts rushing to be made heard inside his head that he can't decide. Hyesung doesn't move from his place inside of the doorway, his shoulders hunching in on themselves as he looks at Eric from head to toe, as if he's trying to figure out if Eric is real or just a figment of his imagination. His eyes are red-rimmed, bloodshot with one too many nights without sleep.

"I'm dreaming, aren't I?" Hyesung mutters, more to himself than Eric. "This is just another dream, isn't it? In a while I'm going to wake up and..." He presses the heels of his palms against his closed eyelids, exhaling deeply. "I just wish you'd come home for real, Eric."

Eric takes a step forward, and then another, closing the distance between them. There is not much of a height difference between them which suits him just fine. It puts him close to eye level with Hyesung, and it means that when Eric wraps an arm around him it fits right around his shoulders. He hears Hyesung's breath hitch in his ear and he responds by running his fingers across his back, lightly, as if that would help.

"I am home." Eric tells him. "I'm sorry it took me so long to return."

There are hands against his chest, and Eric lets himself be pushed away by Hyesung, stepping back as Hyesung directs him to. Then the hands move to his face, cupping either side of his face as Hyesung stares at him with raw hope in his eyes. The shadows in him brighten and fade, and Eric sees him stand a bit straighter as if a weight has been lifted off of him. The light in him will return in time, this Eric knows as a fact because the light has always been a part of Hyesung, even through the two years it spent under the shadow of grief.

"How?" Hyesung says, holding Eric's gaze with his own. There is a faint pressure against his arm, where Hyesung has reached out to touch him, not quite believing him to be real yet.

Eric feels light-headed, all previous traces of nervousness dissolving into something warm within his chest. He wants to smile, and he does just that, even though it feels foreign on his face and probably comes out lopsided. He hasn't done much smiling in the past years away from Hyesung.

"I heard your voice."

And there it is, the first traces of light returning to his eyes. Eric sees the tell-tale glimmer of unshed tears, but decides to hold his tongue, wisely choosing not to comment on it.

This time Hyesung is the one to step forward, wrapping his arms around Eric and burying his face in his neck. The doorway is an odd place for both of them to stand in at this time of the night, but they stay like that for a while without moving. Eric thinks of how scandalised their neighbours would be if they could see them now, as they had been when Eric first moved in.

A stray line of music drifts into Eric's head, reminding him of snow-filled nights with no one around but him. Home had never been that solitary apartment he trudged through the snow nightly to return to. Home had always been here with Hyesung, and it took a song to pull him back. He hums a bit of it, and he feels Hyesung's breath against his neck as he huffs out a laugh upon recognising his own song.

"You know, I wrote the lyrics myself." Hyesung tells him, pulling away again to look at him as his humming comes to an end.

"Yeah?" Eric grins back at Hyesung. "No wonder I always felt that there was something off about it. I just couldn't get them out of my head; they were that bad."

Hyesung punches him in the arm, and Eric feels like he deserved that. Then Hyesung leans back in, his arms encircling Eric again and his lips brushing against his ear. "Welcome home, Eric." he whispers, like he doesn't exactly want Eric to hear, "Thanks for coming back."

But Eric hears him, like he has always been able to.

"I'm home." he says, and this time he knows that it is true.

**Author's Note:**

> [ _I hear your voice._](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5KAjcEucAT0)
> 
> Thanks for reading!
> 
> I actually started writing this in December on a whim (you can probably tell from the setting), but it dragged for so long that I only managed to get this out now.
> 
> Now that Shinhwa is back, let's give our all in supporting them, yeah? Stream and vote!


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